A1200 Hard Disk Replacement and setup.

[grwilliams]

Hi all, I'm another new user to this forum.
I have a pile of Amiga 1200's at work all with faulty HDD's. I've tried replacing these with a standard 2.5" IDE drive. I follow the setup proceedures create a default partition and I end up with two error messages. "Not a valid DOS disk" and "Copy of Work not validated".I'm obviously missing something.
I have managed to rebuild original drives with no problems.
Do standard notebook drives work in the Amiga 1200?

Any help appreciated.

[amigakit]

Yes, standard 2.5" drives work but the Amiga has a 4GB limit for A1200 if you are using Commodore's original FastFileSystem.

Otherwise you will have to use SmartFileSystem if the drives are bigger than 4GB.  Also the primary partition (usually System:) should be less than 2GB.

Hope this helps!

[motorollin]

Yes standard notebook drives work in an A1200. If you are using Workbench 3.0 or 3.1, make sure none of your partitions are larger than (or start after) the 4GB limit. Also, make sure you format the partitions after you create them.

--
moto

--EDIT
You beat me to it  :-P

[grwilliams]

Thanks amigakit. I have had success with a 3GB drive this morning. The bigger drives all above 4GB - are still coming up with a "this volume of work not validated" when I try to copy any files to the HD.
Error codes are:
Copy work - disk not validtaed.
Copy failed return code 20.
How do you format the disk with the smart file system?

[InTheSand]

Hi,

How many A1200s in a pile?! And how did you end up with them at work? Must be a good place to work!

Have you got a recent version of HDToolbox?

If so, you'll find documentation regarding SFS on its original (old) homepage here, and updated SFS LHA archives ready for download here.

The AmigaGuide file in the SFS archive tells you what you need to do.

Regards,

 - Ali

[AmigaFan]

If you are in the states, care to part with any of the 1200's?

Fred

[grwilliams]

Hi Ali,
We use Amigas in an information display system.Back when the system was designed early 90's the Amigas kicked ass with graphics and price compared to a PC.Eventually the system will be upgraded, but until then we have to keep it going as best we can.
I am using install version 3.1 disks.
Cheers
Graeme.

[Hyperspeed]

Once the drive has been partitioned and assuming it's under 4GB then select the NDOS disk, right-click into the menu - Icons-Format Disk and select Fast File System.

Using FFS on drives over 4GB would be a bit slow anyway so it's just as well there's a technical problem with it. Imagine the dreaded checksum error/validating on a 40GB drive with FFS!

:-)